Pixies, 'What Goes Boom'

It's been several months since longtime Pixies bassist Kim Deal left the band, and the remaining members are still figuring out how to play together. But the group's new sound seems to coalesce on its latest single and video, "What Goes Boom."

"Since the reunion, there are sounds that I've been coming up with," guitarist Joey Santiago tells us via email. "And a lot of them just got condensed into this one song, with me going sh*thouse on guitar."

"What Goes Boom," was one of the early songs Pixies worked on before the band went back in the studio, following Deal's departure. "It's kind of a ballsy song with real balls-out playing," says Santiago. "And [it] harkens back to a lot of the harder-edged Pixies stuff, which is my favorite to play."

Songwriter and guitarist Black Francis further explains that "the song is about a girl, a girl who plays the bass guitar. It's got kind of a metal riff which I think that, on occasion, we all really enjoy playing, even though we're not a metal band. And I wouldn't be the first to write a song about some gal who plays bass."

The video for "What Goes Boom" was directed by Jonathan Furmanski and Matthew Galkin. They had some grand plans for this but in the end basically decided it was cheaper and best to just blow something up. In an email, the two directors told us that "Our original vision for the 'What Goes Boom' video was to create an homage to a central, dramatic scene in Star Wars. But, after that idea proved a bit too costly to produce, we decided the next best thing was to blow up Joey Santiago in the desert – the compromises we make for our art."

By the way, there is no new Pixies album coming, for now. The band's first new track, "Bagboy," was offered as a free download on June 28. It was the band's first new song in nearly a decade. Four additional new songs were included in an EP released Sept. 3. We're told more new music is in the works.